Schoolchildren play on melting ice at the climate change affected Yupik Eskimo village of Napakiak on the Yukon Delta in Alaska on April 18, 2019. With recent unusually high temperatures life in this remote villages has been affected causing eroded land, flooding, and difficulties to access roads and to hunting. (Photo by Mark RALSTON / AFP)MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images

Schoolchildren play on melting ice at the climate change affected Yupik Eskimo village of Napakiak on the Yukon Delta in Alaska on April 18, 2019. With recent unusually high temperatures life in this remote

Schoolchildren play on melting ice at the climate change affected Yupik Eskimo village of Napakiak on the Yukon Delta in Alaska on April 18, 2019. With recent unusually high temperatures life in this remote villages has been affected causing eroded land, flooding, and difficulties to access roads and to hunting. (Photo by Mark RALSTON / AFP)MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images

Schoolchildren play on melting ice at the climate change affected Yupik Eskimo village of Napakiak on the Yukon Delta in Alaska on April 18, 2019. With recent unusually high temperatures life in this remote

WASHINGTON - Former EPA administrators, Republican and Democratic alike, urged Congress Tuesday to take swift action to fight climate change, in a clear rebuke to President Donald Trump's questioning of the severity of the crisis.

Gina McCarthy, who served in the Obama administration; Christine Todd Whitman, who served under George W. Bush; William K. Reilly, who served under George H.W. Bush and Lee Thomas, who served in the Reagan administration, all testified that climate change posed a grave risk to the planet and greenhouse gas emissions needed to be cut.

"We are here because we are deeply concerned that decades of environmental progress areat risk of being lost," Whitman said in written testimony ahead of a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "Perhaps the most discouraging – and dangerous – fallout of the approach of the current administration at EPA is the abandonment of any concern about the threat posed by global climate change."

The hearing comes amidst continued political divide over the risks of climate change and what to do about it when the world remains deeply dependent on carbon-emitting fossil fuels for energy.

Some Republicans, including Houston attorney and former secretary of state James Baker, have advocated for the creation of a carbon tax, doing away with greenhouse gas regulations and giving energy companies protection against the rising tide of lawsuits over their contribution to climate change.

Reilly, a Republican, rejected that idea, saying EPA must play a role.

"I support an impactful carbon tax, but those favoring immunity for energy companies from any liability have not embraced one," he testified. "EPA is the best federal agency to orchestrate both the mitigation and the adaptation to the future scientists foresee."

But it was Trump's stated goal of reducing environmental regulations to grow the economy that hung over the hearing and rankled some of the assembled administrators.

Lee declined to address the current administration's actions in his written testimony, while Reilly bemoaned "in some circles it's fashionable to attack EPA for job ­killing regulations." McCarthy and Whitman presented a forceful attack on what they described as an effort to undermine decades of work by environmental officials from both parties.

"I find it disconcerting because this collection of past EPA Administrators feel obligated to testify together and individually to make the case that what is happening at EPA today is simply put, not normal and to solicit your help to get it on a more productive path," McCarthy wrote.